For people who prefer the KDE 3.5-style desktop, a new version of the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) has been released. Trinity is a continuation of the KDE 3.5 Desktop Environment with ongoing updates and new features. Trinity Desktop Environment 3.5.13 source code is available and the project also provides packages for Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora. Read on for an overview of what is new in Trinity 3.5.13!

Features and fixes

There has been a number of changes and improvements to Trinity in the 3.5.13 release. The most visible of those are:

Added new "Monitor and Display" control center module for system-wide single/multi monitor and display configuration

Integration with applications like Firefox and NetworkManager with a new DBUS notification client

A new compositor is included and several applications including Amarok have been modified to take advantage of that

A new widget theme, Asteroid, has been added and the GTK-Qt theme engine has been improved

An optional Secure Attention Key has been implemented to further secure the login and desktop lock dialogs

The quicklaunch kicker applet has been improved and Kicker can now have "Deep Buttons"

KRandr now has DPMS support and Gamma configuration

There is also a number of new applications added to this Trinity release:

kbookreader

kdbusnotification

kmymoney

kstreamripper

Under the hood

The Trinity project is working hard to make TDE 3.5 easier to maintain. Many of the modules have been ported to CMAKE in this release. There have been cleanups of a number of libraries, and many stability fixes. For example, Flash no longer segfaults Konqueror and the lockups caused by OpenGL screensavers have been fixed.

The Trinity project also announced that they are taking over Qt3 maintenance from now on.

Congratulations to Trinity!

While the KDE community is focused on developing the 4.x series of KDE Platform, Plasma Workspaces and Applications, we welcome and support the efforts of the Trinity Project to provide a desktop environment for those who want to continue using the 3.x series!

I am part of the Trinity Development Team so i'll give this a shot. Basically we have decided not to convert to DBUS. the overhead to do so would be pretty in depth code wise for little purpose. DCOP has things DBUS doesn't, and vica versa.

DCOP is small enough not to impact performance, so running both isn't an issue.

This is what make's 'Free and Open Source Software' so powerful, software evolves, sometimes requiring drastic revisions such as the jump from KDE 3.x to 4.x, but the old series is never confined to the bit bucket and fond memories, others can keep it alive, providing yet more choice's for users.

The problem is that we can't foster growth in KDE and due to most people in Linux favouring fast development over say, stability, KDE4 could not be competitive enough after 4.0 and had large segments of market share taken away from it. This was all thanks to the stab-in-the-back of the KDE 3.5 developers who are trying so hard to keep this damned and outdated project alive.

This is the negative power of FOSS; forking splits the community if anything.

I hope they don't receive funding from KDE e.V., otherwise I might concede to organising a DDoS as that would really anger me (just kidding!).

Some people don't like kde4 and how it works. Accept that.
Some people want simple, fast and productive desktop enviroment, without unnecessary things like infinite applets, animations and so on.
I'm glad that someone keeps KDE3.5 alive.

I was always a KDE fan and I like KDE4 so much and I'm using it in my work PC. But at home I had used KDE 3.x series and was perfect at that time. When KDE 4.x released I tried it at home but my PC is old and weak to maintain KDE 4.x and became slow and laggy sometimes. So I used and forced to downgrade to KDE 3.x While I'm still using KDE 4.x at WORK PC and i'm happy with both. I just wanted to tell you that some people don't like KDE 4.x and the other can not use it due to their old and weak PCs and here (KDE3.x is the solution).

I'm happy that some one survived KDE 3.x and happy that KDE 4.x changed the way we use our systems and doing jobs with new technologies & efforts.
Thanks KDE for this :)

"Some people want simple, fast and productive desktop enviroment, without unnecessary things like infinite applets, animations and so on."

Thanks for showing off again the real attitude of most KDE4 "critics".

You mention "simplicity". How is KDE3 simpler than KDE4? Any proofs or are you confusing your "I'm familiar with x and thus it is easier for me than y" with claiming simplicity? Hello Windows user.

"fast": Any proofs or just your assumptions? Your statements are far too general to be true or taken seriously. I can show you things in KDE4 that are faster than in KDE3, a lot, but I don't care about KDE3 and thus I do not criticise it – maybe you should learn from that.

"productive": again, any proof that those using KDE4 are less productive? Or is it again just you who cannot or does not want to learn new things that improve productiveness or keep the level and simply look better. But hey, something that looks good cannot be productive – that's for sure!

"infinite applets": I see. You are one of those that cannot say "no" but have to restrain themselves to have no choice. Otherwise you would not argue that way because – guess what – plasmoids and applets are optional in KDE4, so if you do not like them, you do not have to use them. You could even port your precious kicker or what not to KDE4 and use it.

"unnecessary": Who are you to judge what is necessary and what not? a11y has improved since KDE3 – but who cares about those. I only would have to find a single applet or effect that helps somebody and would have proved you wrong. I guess by now you realise how obvious your lack of constructiveness in your criticism is and how one can only fail if one makes these kind of general statements.

"animations": again. KDE4 gives you a choice, you can disable them.

So once again you showed off that most KDE3 users are unfortunately just KDE4 haters which stand in their own way and imply that KDE4 is not productive, slow, complicated to use etc. Pathetic.

Nobody wants to convince you to use KDE4, nobody claims that KDE4 is better than KDE3, you can use KDE3 as long as you want, nobody cares. Just don't show off your inferiority complex towards KDE4 by repeating the same general assumptions and allegations over and over again.

You should spend your time reading Qt3, KDE3 and KDE3-apps' code because those are unmaintained (packaging is not maintaining) and while there where dozens if not hundreds of professional coders which checked for security issues and fixed them, now there are not even a handful if any professionals which package that code and you can do the maths how much time they can spend on checking code, leaving alone knowing the code to a degree which is necessary to provide secure software. But, yeah, Qt3 is bug free and free of security issues, as is KDE3, KDE4 or any other piece of software…

Honestly, keep using KDE3 or any piece of software you like, but keep your allegations and general statements to yourself.

KDE4 has a lot of features that KDE3 don't. And look better and more polished than KDE3. Also Amarok has a lot of new feautres.
Activities, semantic search, desktop effects, different architecture, a powerful and extensible krunner, a new file explorer (dolphin), a improved configuration system. You have 3 o 4 task manager to choose, 3 launchers, ...
You can't compare only time response without take in consideration all the new stuff that brings you KDE4. And with every new release they are optimizing more and more.
For me, KDE3 is good if you had a old pc. In my two years laptop, kde4 flies.

My use pattern:
> Activities
I don't need
> semantic search
I don't need (and it gets in my way)
> desktop effects
I don't need
> different architecture
I don't care
> a powerful and extensible krunner
I don't need
> a new file explorer (dolphin)
It gets in my way
> a improved configuration system
I don't care
> 3 o 4 task manager to choose,
I don't need (but this one is the silliest! Is the one I choose slower because there are others? I hope not!)
> 3 launchers
ditto...

So the comparation is good to me. What I use of Trinity is always faster than what I use of KDE4.

I think the availability of features I don't use should not slow down the ones I use. This is usually a sign of bad underlying architecture, if I may say.

Ok, just my personal use-pattern and my personal experience, no offence intended, I know those features are used and cared about by many people.
That's why I'm glad there's space for both desktops.

Some people don't like kde4 and how it works. Accept that.
Some people want simple, fast and productive desktop enviroment, without unnecessary things like infinite applets, animations and so on.

You are clearly confusing KDE(4) with a desktop environment. Nobody prevents anybody from creating a simple, fast and productive desktop environment based on KDE technologies[*], if only those "some people" stopped moaning all the time and instead actually did something.

At my first kde4 install I realised I could not use my years old configuration and tailoring. Not even the same desktop appearance could be reached. Actually, the best desktop view I was able to get could be called ugly.
By the time this happened, learning and building everything again was not feasible. So I became a kde3 user by default and never gave kde4 another try.
My judgement of the situation is that kde4, no matter how brilliant and innovative, created unnecessary difficulties that could never exist in upgrades, especially for common users like me. It seemed to have been created to and for the creators themselves, not for users.
The radical change was not dictated by technological reasons like the windows move from 16bit win311 to 32bit w95 and followers. Not even by market pressure as kde3 was a true conqueror of hearts and minds. The move looked a bit whimsy.
Never gave kde4 another try and will not do this while Trinity (kde3) works fine. As there is not major technological breakthrough to affect end users in sight, I'd say it will take several years before another desktop needs to be learned.
Thank you for all of you there that maintain and support Trinity.

"kde4...created unnecessary difficulties that could never exist in upgrades..." simply is not true.

"...seemed to have been created to and for the creators themselves...". How things seem is a personal interpretation, so how it seemed to you is your business. The fact is that it's not how KDE4 was developed.

"...radical change was not dictated by technological reasons..." Not so. The radical change to KDE 4 was a response to technological changes outside of KDE. Planning and extensive conversations happened for years before KDE 4 was released.

"whimsy"? Well 4+ years of planning and development are not hardly whimsical. What software project have you been associated with for 4 intensive years? Very little whimsy happening there.

It's good you like Trinity and KDE3. Really no more reason than that is needed. There's certainly no need to disparage KDE 4.

I've been using KDE3 since years and have been very satisfied. Upgrading my Debian with manually configured kernel to squeeze broke about everything, partly because I needed to adjust my kernel config which helped. But the key issue then was that Squeeze by default comes with KDE4.

I have four machines running Debian, most of which with pretty outdated hardware. Two out of four run as servers, running VNC servers. It turns out that KDE4 doesn't work with VNC which was a real showstopper. Fortunately, a friend told me about Trinity. This solved most of my Squeeze problems.

So, thanks to the crew maintaining Trinity. Cool stuff, helping to keep me on KDE instead of migrating to Gnome.

Quite. So are you saying that those of us who favour stability over fast development, are hereby kicked out of the FLOSS community so that you, and those who think like you, don't have to put up with the competition? Why should we put up with a DE that we dislike (in my case strongly), so that you can have what you want? Are you also saying that LXDE and KFCE4 must be assigned to the rubbish bucket?

FLOSS is about choice, and anyone who wishes can make a fork. If the fork is popular it will thrive. If it is not, it will fall by the wayside.

I am delighted to be able to continue with the more stable and more configurable KDE 3.x, and am very grateful to Timothy and the other developers for giving me the chance to make this choice.

Lisi

It occurs to me that you may just be trolling and I have now fed the troll. But just in case.....

I don't know what "low-powered netbooks" means exactly. I have Plasma Netbook installed on a 3 year old Asus Aspire. I maxed the memory ($20). It's plenty fast enough.

Installed the same for a friend, and suggested that he also max memory, even though his whatever-it-is MSI clunker worked fine without it. This replaced WinXP, which barely worked. He's thrilled with KDE 4 & Plasma.

Yes, I'm still on KDE3 and I intend to stay on it if I can. It's great to have people like you around that continue to maintain and develop this wonderful piece of code. You may say a lot of things about KDE3, but it is a very reliable workhorse - and that is all I need.

I'm on KDE 3.5, and I plan to stay here. At least until a number of really annoying things in KDE 4 are resolved, and its speed is as good as I'm used to from KDE 3.

My main machine is running Gentoo, which supports KDE 3 through its elaborate overlay system. Other machines I'm using are generally Fedora, and so the Trinity packages for Fedora are great news. There is a security problem with using packages from not-so-trusted sources, and I'll have to look into that of course.

Apparently some KDE developers are complaining over the fact that KDE 3 is being kept alive. Unbelievable! Surely it's a lone troll, right?

This is not the place to discuss KDE 4, so can I maybe just suggest that current KDE developers, for their own sake, try to look into why anybody would want to run an old version? I've already given two reasons, and I'll continue:

- Missing features (like drag/drop in Konqueror's left pane)
- Very awkward systems (like Activities)
- Bloat (Nepomuk, Plasma and a 1000 other things that get in my way)
- Speed (KDE4 absolutely doesn't feel as responsive as KDE3)
- Kmail2 barely working (Yes, I can mix things, but why bother?)
- I have a desktop computer with a large screen. Not a phone or a pad.
- I am an experienced user, not a moron.
- Get of my lawn.

KDE 4 is certainly progressing. But it seems that to get a small feature back, I have to also get some whole new subsystem and workflow. Things that get in my way and that I'm not going to use, in exchange for something I already have in KDE 3 makes this an easy choice for me.

I love KDE4 & generally prefer to use KDE4 instead of Trinity. However, I maintain several old desktops & laptops that only have 512 MB of RAM or less. I have tried KDE4 and Trinity DE on these old computers. Trinity DE is fast on these old computers. KDE4 is so slow on these computers, that they are unusable.

Now, if I spent a lot of time learning how to tweak KDE4 for use on old computers, maybe it would be just as fast as Trinity DE on these old machines, but I don't have time for that. Trinity does the trick just fine on these old computers. On PCs with 1.5 GB or more of RAM, I use KDE4 & it works beautifully.

Also, I'm looking forward to hopefully having one of the Camp KDE gatherings (or whatever we end up calling it) in Bellingham, WA USA in 2012. And Plasma Active looks very promising!

But all the things you're saying... you're too biased and negative. The basic answer is...You can disabled if you don't want to use it the new features.

- Missing features (like drag/drop in Konqueror's left pane)-> Use Dolphin instead, is the default file browser.

- Very awkward systems (like Activities)--> Don't use it. I like it, by the way.

- Bloat (Nepomuk, Plasma and a 1000 other things that get in my way)--> Disable nepoumk, don't put plasmoids in your desktop. Easy.

- Speed (KDE4 absolutely doesn't feel as responsive as KDE3)--> True in old computers. But you have effects, eyecandy, semantic search... and tweaking a little, you'll have a fast desktop.

- Kmail2 barely working (Yes, I can mix things, but why bother?) --> I agree.. but you're only saying negative things.. and how about the great improvements and new feautres in other applications? (digikam, okular, krita, kate,choqok,...)

- I have a desktop computer with a large screen. Not a phone or a pad. --> Don't understand you... You can configure KDE4 as you needed (icon size, taskbar size and position, behaviour...)

I take great exception to the accusation that I (or anybody else) has stabbed KDE in the back by contributing to Trinity (in my case as a package maintainer). KDE left me and many others behind.

Furthermore, I just don't see the point of either I or any of the other people involved in Trinity 'coming back' to KDE since we now have different views of where the desktop should be headed, views which I suspect are no longer capable of coexisting within the same project. The end result of such a return would be strife and/or a messy compromise which pleases nobody.

KDE 4 has many great developers involved and I'm sure it works well for many people, but it doesn't work for me and the direction the project is currently headed in suggests that this situation is unlikely to change. Therefore, I will continue to contribute to Trinity.

I would like to thank you for keeping Trinity alive. I have four Pentium IV 1.6s with 512 MB of RAM to switch from Windows XP "Guanaco Edition" to Linux and I need something that runs fast on them. KDE 4 is pretty, beautiful, powerful, amazing, but it won't run as fast as Trinity on those computers.

There's no need at all to start yet another endless, mostly anonymous, discussion about whether KDE 4 is good or not, or whether KDE 3 is good, or not, or which one is better, with an endless re-threading over ground covered so often it looks like a WWI trench.

There are two things important:

People who felt the urge have stepped up and started working on Trinity, when it would have been so much easier to just complain. I have great respect for them, and I was really happy when Timothy Pearson promptly renamed the trinity fork of Krita when I asked him to.

The KDE project and community is open enough that Trinity can continue to be developed right inside the KDE subversion repository and news about can be published on dot.kde.org, when it would have been so much easier to just say "go away".

And that should be enough for everyone: free software works like it should, there is an option for everyone, and nobody needs to go out and argue why they feel that KDE 4 developers are idiots who don't know what their users want or that Trinity developers are idiots who cannot possibly maintain what they started out to maintain. Whoever does so has not understood that there is no tribal war going on. We're a free software project, not acting in Lord of the Flies.

.. that's pretty much what i thought when i read through the comments. in fact, it's pretty much what i wrote to the trinity mailing list a few days ago.

i'm disappointed in a lot of the communication that happens around these issues, particularly as it pits people against each other who have far more in common than not. it also drives many of them to making claims that are or can not be backed up in an attempt to make their case seem stronger .. which just leads to all kinds of back-and-forth noise, reinforcing the "pitting people against each other" issue.

who cares! use what you like and be happy that it's all there.

as for the "backstabbing" or "turning their back on me" sorts of statements: no, KDE did not turn their back on anyone. if KDE had, trinity would not be able to exist. some people confuse KDE for being a "do what I want" sort of slave community as opposed to a participation based community where those who do the work set the results.

in this case, people have worked on Trinity and we have those results. great! i also don't see anyone, really, who would otherwise be contributing to the 4.x code bases working instead on Trinity. the vast majority of developers have continued working on 4.x and moving that now towards 5.x releases in the coming years (Frameworks 5 being the first step), and that has not been materially altered by Trinity.

if anything, Trinity has given a good place for those to hang out who would otherwise simply throw negativity at the rest of the community who is working on moving things forward, albeit in a direction they (while not doing anything themselves) don't want.

in other words, we're all getting what we want .. because people are putting effort into those things. applaud those efforts. save your condemnation for someone else.

There's no need at all to start yet another endless, mostly anonymous, discussion about whether KDE 4 is good or not, or whether KDE 3 is good, or not, or which one is better, with an endless re-threading over ground covered so often it looks like a WWI trench.

There are two things important:

People who felt the urge have stepped up and started working on Trinity, when it would have been so much easier to just complain. I have great respect for them, and I was really happy when Timothy Pearson promptly renamed the trinity fork of Krita when I asked him to.

The KDE project and community is open enough that Trinity can continue to be developed right inside the KDE subversion repository and news about can be published on dot.kde.org, when it would have been so much easier to just say "go away".

And that should be enough for everyone: free software works like it should, there is an option for everyone, and nobody needs to go out and argue why they feel that KDE 4 developers are idiots who don't know what their users want or that Trinity developers are idiots who cannot possibly maintain what they started out to maintain. Whoever does so has not understood that there is no tribal war going on. We're a free software project, not acting in Lord of the Flies.

I am currently running an updated OpenSuSE 12.1-rc2 and I have been unable to find any repository featuring trinity. All I could find was an older 3.5.10 KDE. Also, I could not find any discussions in that regard and no one mentioned packaging Trinity for 12.1.

I skip the description of my disappointments with the various distributions versions...

I blame KDE for having abandoned users of version 3. Luckily I'm not at the head of a large company, if that were the case, I would have forced the installation of Suse (ie OSS 10.3) on the maximum number of workstations!

How long has the KDE4 project been started? where is it? If I had to hire a responsible "research and development", to still be a member of the team of KDE developers would be prohibitive. In fact, to persist for years to rewrite something that was working and most importantly, to give up the distribution (not to mention maintaining) of it is unforgivable.

More controversial: the approach of KDE4 seems to follow the spirit of the leader of the "market": the machines / grafical systems still need more power to run the applications they host...

I started to use KDE 4 only in 4.5 version because the speed and feel 4.7 sluggish yet.

My computer is 3-4 years old. A very old computer these days. This is why I feel KDE 4.7 sluggish but I don't want to buy another only to run KDE 4.

What can I do?? Help the community to develop a faster KDE 4.

There are few developers adding great features with little time to optimize the code, but anyone can help them.

And to make the things worst, KDE 4 in a recent computer is not sluggish anyway. I have one of them in work.

If you think KDE 4 is sluggish, try Windows Vista/Seven. MacOS is always installed in a powerful hardware.

Most people behave like has paid for the software instead to behave like a part of the community. The code is ours. The benefits too.

Try to find the bottleneck, optimize yourself and send back the improvement. I know several people that can do it but chooses to complain. Those that don't have the skills could learn it. It is not that hard. Many optimizations is simple ones but someone has to investigate where is the bottleneck.

And, of course, there always will be some old hardware that only run in old software. I think the Trinity is a great project and should continue for a long time.

When KDE4 was released years ago, I didn't really like it. But the last years it was improved a lot. I know this, cause it's my main desktop for years already. (don't get me wrong: kde4* still has a lot of bugs, but there are minor for me)
On the other hand, I find it a very good initiative to keep the KDE3 series 'alive', and this because I want to keep KDE 3.5 for an old computer (700Mb) RAM. Ok, KDE4 also works over there, but I find it too slow, while KDE3.5 works fine over there.
so yes, thank you Trinity.
But also thanks to the KDE community for the KDE4 releases.

I was stuck with an outdated Debian release for a long time, to keep KDE3.5. Yes, I really liked KDE3.5. Then came Trinity and I could switch. Soon I found that KDE4 had matured to be good enough too and I switched. Having both Trinity and KDE4 at the same time was nice, so, I can say, Trinity helped me switch gradually to KDE4. Now I use KDE4 - mostly. Yes there are still some small issues, I miss some of the features of KDE3, but it ok. Thanks for the good work.

I am one of those that are happely using trinity. And it is not due to that kde 4 is sluggish nor due to the direction of kde 4. The reason for me not using kde 4 is becouse of kde 4 is still missing support for Multi-Screen-Setup:https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256242
for me it is the only way to run my 3 screens becouse I use 2 cards to power them. Unto this bug is fixed or there is another solution coming op(I am fellowing wayland with some interrest but Nvidia does not have any plan to supporting it)